Thalamus to ventral medial prefrontal cortex pathway activation is dose-dependent on perceived nicotine consumption.

“the connection between the thalamus and the ventral medial prefrontal cortex that pathway scales in the most beautiful way such that people that were told they had smoked a low or Vaped a low amount of nicotine got a subtle activation of that pathway people that were told they got a moderate amount of nicotine got a more robust activation of that pathway and the people that were told that they got a high amount of nicotine in The Vape Pen saw a very robust activation of the thalamus to this ventral prefrontal cortical pathway”

“now the most interesting things are the following first of all people's subjective feeling of being on the drug matches what they were told so if they were told hey this is a high amount of nicotine like yeah it feels like a high amount of nicotine and these are experienced smokers if it was a medium amount they're like man that feels like a medium amount if it's a low amount they think it was a low amount”

“the uh let's see the the most probably the most important figure is figure two remember I said I like to read the titles of figures which is that the belief about nicotine strength induced a dose dependent response in the thalamus basically if you and figure 2B um can tell you if they believe that they got more nicotine that's uh that's essentially the response that they that they saw”

“there's also an output from this thing the thalamus to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex which is an area of the forebrain that really allows us to limit our focus and our attention for sake of learning it allows us to pay attention”

“if you look at parameter estimates so this is the degree of activation between the thalamus and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and it's called the instructed belief you can see that there's a low medium and high scatter of dots for each and that each one of those is significant”

“the connection between the thalamus and the ventral medial prefrontal cortex that pathway scales in the most beautiful way such that people that were told they had smoked a low or Vaped a low amount of nicotine got a subtle activation of that pathway people that were told they got a moderate amount of nicotine got a more robust activation of that pathway and the people that were told that they got a high amount of nicotine in The Vape Pen saw a very robust activation of the thalamus to this ventral prefrontal cortical pathway”

“the belief about nicotine strength induced a dose dependent response in the thalamus”